Goodbye to Howie

These past few weeks have been stressful for me horse wise. My mare is suffering from cellulites, as you probably know from my last post. It’s a slow healing process, but she’s on the road to recovery.

A week after my mare contracted cellulites, another horse in my barn also got it. Silhouette in Time, aka Howie, was a wonderful old gentlemen, a Thoroughbred schoolmaster, who’d been successfully competed by his owner to Intermediare. In his early twenties, he was teaching a new generation of riders. One rider won her first blue ribbon on Howie this past summer. He taught his riders the upper level moves with the patience of a saint, never giving anything for free, making you do it right to get the desired results.

I knew Howie pretty well, he was stabled across from my horse for a few years. Originally, Nicki evented Howie. Eventually, she focused on dressage. Howie wasn’t bred for dressage or conformationally predisposed to being a dressage horse. Because of his amazing heart and fighting spirit, he tried for his owner despite his physical shortcomings and took her a very long way. I believe Nicki won her silver medal on him.

Howie had a predisposition to cellulites. He contracted it a few years ago, and Nicki almost lost him, but he’d pulled through.

The day before this latest bout of cellulites, he’d been used in two lessons, one in the evening, and showed no signs of distress. When a student went to the pasture to get him for a morning lesson, one hind leg was swollen to twice its size, and he didn’t want to move. The vet was called, Howie was treated with an IV of antibiotics, among other things and put in a stall for the night.

Sometime during the night, Howie lay down. He tried to get up and couldn’t. In his fight to get on his feet, he kicked out the entire front of the stall and was found early the next morning lying in the aisle way amidst broken boards. I understand it took several people to help get him to his feet. He was put in a pasture and blanketed.

I saw him later than afternoon, obviously in great distress. Several of us, including his owner, watched him and wondered what to do. Shortly after I left, Nicki took his temperature. It was 105. A few minutes later, Howie went down, and he wouldn’t be getting up again. The infection had gotten into his bloodstream. The vet came out immediately and put him to sleep.

Howie was put into a trailer for his last trailer ride and taken to Nicki’s parents’ farm and laid to rest.

All of us who knew him are heartbroken over the loss of this sweet old guy.

Enjoy those green pastures forever, Howie.